Researchers have noted that in China, lung cancer currently has the highest cancer mortality rate due to smoking, environmental pollution, and other factors. To understand the effect of psychological interventions combined with health education, a study from China investigated these interventions on patients with lung cancer undergoing chemotherapy.
The key to a successful psychological intervention for patients with lung cancer is the nurse-patient relationship. With a good nurse-patient relationship, patients can trust and depend on the nursing staff, raising the patients’ health literacy regarding lung cancer.
The study recruited 70 patients with lung cancer aged 23-78 years who received chemotherapy from June 2017 to June 2020. The patients were randomly divided into a routine intervention group or a combined intervention group. The routine intervention group received the typical nursing intervention consisting of routine pathography, vital-sign monitoring, medication, and dietary guidance. The combined intervention group received psychological intervention combined with health education.
After six weeks of intervention, the patients were reviewed in the following:
- Self-rating anxiety scale (SAS) score
- Self-rating depression scale (SDS) score
- Cancer pain score before and after nursing
- Improvement of respiratory function before and after nursing
- Sleep quality score
- Quality-of-life score
- Nursing satisfaction
The quality-of-life measures that included physiological, physical, social, and emotional indexes were significantly better in patients in the combined intervention group as opposed to those in the routine group. SAS and SDS scores were higher in the routine intervention groups, but cancer pain, respiratory function, sleep quality, quality of life, and nursing satisfaction scores all scored higher in the combined intervention group.
Close communication between nurses and their patients in the combined intervention group led to improvement of the nurse-patient relationship by enhancing patients’ enthusiasm for cooperating with nursing staff during treatment.
Supporting lung cancer patients with a psychological intervention combined with health education can greatly improve the quality of life of lung cancer patients.
